


before you I had a platinum blond heart

by Radiolaria



Category: Star Trek: Discovery
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Canonical Character Death, F/F, Missing Scene, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-12
Updated: 2018-04-12
Packaged: 2019-04-22 02:58:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,316
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14299269
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Radiolaria/pseuds/Radiolaria
Summary: When her captain had set to help Michael reacquaint herself with her humanity, she could not foresee how everything she taught would have to be erased.It is three, two, one second before Michael dies again and she has a painful confession to make.Set during 1x07, "Magic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad".





	before you I had a platinum blond heart

**Author's Note:**

> Scribbled in answer to "Magic to make the sanest man go mad". I have always thought it would end up in another fic, but my own personal canon went in another direction and I don't have use for it anymore.
> 
> This will probably be the closest to canon I will write. I am still shamelessly ignoring episode 1x04.
> 
> Title from Juliette Armanet's song "Adieu Tchin Tchin".

 

 “Le plus cruel résultat de ce que je suis bien forcé d’appeler nos fautes (ne fût-ce que pour me conformer à l’usage) est de contaminer jusqu’au souvenir du temps où nous ne les avions pas commises. » Marguerite Yourcenar, _Alexis ou le traité du vain combat_

“The cruelest consequence of what I am compelled to call our mistakes (if only to conform to custom) is the contamination of our memories from the time when we had not committed them.” Marguerite Yourcenar, _Alexis_

* * *

_"You have never been in love.”_

Paul is right.

“In love” required from the object of her love to be real.

The same way Michael has never been in love, she has never quietly admired from afar, when colonies were saved from Starfleet’s culpable negligence, when cases for forgiveness then devotion encouraged ensigns to endlessly better themselves, when her love for stories drew her to the ready room after hours, when _O gods_ , that silhouette against the explosion of space on their viewscreen, every morning, at every glance, like a nebula hung on the backdrop of her daily life.  

Michael was human, is human still, and her curiosity was non-negotiable. What did Sarek think such a soul would do to her heart?

Michael has never imagined how certain fingers could feel on her arm, then, upon being granted time and time again the touch, on the small of her back, on her neck, on her ankle, where circumstances always found ways to drop an inadvertent hand and she was well disposed for their offerings. Michael has never grown bold and greedy, making her skin and heart parched in the process of hoping and hoping and hoping, and because the universe was vast and unpredictable, perhaps, just perhaps, a combination of chances would drop _her_ on her lips, somehow.

Michael made all the observations and all the calculations. Too much, too many wore love’s label, from hot sauce to every new cadet, for Michael to dare interpret the words toward her as anything but a demonstration of Michael’s indispensability to the ship. Once, _she_ loved a bolt for holding under pressure.

Michael has never been in love as her most searing embraces happened with another, when her love was away, asleep, safe from the mistakes Michael kept making, from life, _another with her face and her soul and her mind_. The sound of that name on Michael’s lips was for none other but herself, a lullaby to keep Michael asleep, in _her_ arms, in dreams, where _she_ is complete and weightless and not a plumb line from her heart to the ground, where _she_ is smiling and proud, not afraid of her, not disappointed in her, not dead.

_Not dead._

All her dreams from that time have collapsed into a single desire, poor, grey, unfitting to _her_ memory.

Michael was never visited by a ghost in her cell; guilt, loneliness and rage came instead. _She_ was none of those. The endless reel of their time together, seven years projected on a two by two meter white wall, kept turning, private showing for private hell. The sound of the blade shattering ribs, piercing lungs, rushing blood and air out, flapped against Michael’s brain every night, like the tape at the end of a bygone movie reel. Michael had known the rhythm of _her_ inflections like a second language; the tattoo of _her_ last breaths set the cadence of the first months, word by word in court, step by step in prison, a vicious life support system.

And then, when _she_ came to her at last, a light, not a shadow, _she_ was hopeful, confident, affectionate, as if apologizing for leaving a meeting early. To Michael’s shame, the joy of seeing her again and hearing her voice fooled the guilt for an instant, until the words found the part of her brain that is not in love.

“Daughter.”

_Blade._

When the hologram flickered out of existence, her sentence fell, again: life and _you’ll never have been in love_. Love is for Starfleet officers only, for those not in love with their captain. The right to be in love was lost to Michael the moment she grabbed her friend’s neck, the custody of her memory lost, the confession in her heart shut down, even before death came. In the dreams that still had looked like dreams through the haze of grief, Michael’s touch had been tender instead of hostile, requested instead of traitorous; her touch had been answered, increased, secured. _She_ had been nothing but a dream.

The colour of her life on the Shenzhou changed that night. In the past, they have all the time in the world now, since she was not in love, but Michael does not live in the past. She learns to erase what Philippa taught her because it is inextricable from what she set off. She stops rehashing the words she never said to Philippa and starts rehearsing the ones she can say about Philippa. She can say her name because she is not in love.

After a while, one made of painful mornings and friendly handshakes, the last frame does not make such a clatter anymore in her brain: she betrayed her captain and she started a war. It makes moving easier, her pain a missing limb rather than a gaping wound.

Philippa probably knew this.

Her friend is dead, the memory of them wrapped in a bow for posterity to write down about, minus a few unmentionable edges. If Michael had loved her, she would not have attacked her when she needed her the most. The judges ruled Michael Burnham was reckless and dishonorable, not in love, guilty of insubordination, not passion.

 _The evidence is there._ Philippa gave her plausible deniability.

In Human fiction, daughters often kill their mothers in order to grow up and as such Philippa’s words were exact. Michael concludes being a disappointment, the truism of a daughter, is easier than an almost lover, however hard it is to be Philippa’s disappointment.

She knew this too.

Philippa knew everything except what Michael has set to deconstruct thought after thought, with all her logic and heart. It is perhaps the only task they can agree to perform in concert.

It was a love story; it was a lover’s betrayal.

But Michael has never been in love. It was guilt all along, even before it was. Her passion, her bashfulness, her control, her insubordination, her devotion, her terror and every single piece of tenderness Philippa gave her, all of it is culpability.

_You were not in love._

How could she know what being in love felt like otherwise?

Michael accepted this truth as a token of sanity way back in the emptiness of her cell and she can well deny it when her skin is bursting and her throat gasping at smoke. She wishes she could forget everything that led her not to be in love and her wish will be granted in a breath. Because, and it is the hardest truth to disclose when she is dying and the air around her is blistering: it did not feel bad, it did not hurt. Loving Philippa was a blessing, even if it is not real.

While they were sharing each other’s life, sharing their love for the stars, her heart was content and warm. When her captain had set to help Michael reacquaint her heart with her humanity, she could not foresee how everything she showed her would have to be erased for the sake of her heart.

Yet Philippa would understand. However wrong Michael had been about the nature of their bond, Philippa loved her.

Michael takes a deep —last— breath, feeling the ground broil as Harry Mudd, yet again, obliterates the ship, and, grateful for the annihilation granted to her thoughts, yet again, she confesses:

_You were in love. You are in love now and she is dead._


End file.
